11/8/2022 0 Comments Rufus eight miles highI think every young person is competing with their parents. I was the son of the Life magazine writer and I was really annoyed by it.” Who instigated the competition – his father or him? “I don’t know. There were times that he was half-tempted to kill him, he sings, then asks: “How can you murder someone / In a way that they don’t die? / I didn’t want to kill him / That would be suicide.”ĭid it upset him that he had the same name as his father? “It did. They fought over the same woman (his mother), their level of fame and respective legacies. Not only did they share the same name, his father sent him to the same school and gave him the same gold signet ring. In the Freudian song of the same title, he sings about being mistaken for his father, and he answers that he is his father. In 2018, he made Surviving Twin, a Netflix film about their relationship. Wainwright says as far back as he can remember there was a rivalry between the two of them. Loudon Wainwright Jr was a celebrated journalist – a columnist, reporter and interviewer for Life magazine. He didn’t have a lot of money, although we had cousins who were very rich.” We grew up in a posh neighbourhood in Bedford, 40 miles north of New York City, and we were members of the golf club and the yacht club on Rhode Island, but my dad was making a journalist’s living. How had they made it? “They were investment bankers and robber barons, the usual way!” Did the money reach him? “No, it never got down to me or my dad’s generation. “There is a story of my grandfather and grandmother being in some swanky hotel in Europe on the day the stock market crashed in 1929 and my great-grandfather walked into the living room suite and said: ‘We’ve got to get the boat home – we’ve just lost $20m,’ or whatever they lost. The money came from way back down the generations, Wainwright III explains. The first Loudon Wainwright was a wealthy entrepreneur. Wainwright, as his name suggests, comes from a mini-dynasty of Loudon Wainwrights. In recent years, Rufus and Martha have returned the compliment. At times he has infuriated his children by mining their lives for source material. Wainwright is compulsively honest – which has served him brilliantly in his music career, less well in his private life. When a question is deeply personal, he’ll tell you he shouldn’t go there, but can’t help himself. Just as he has ruthlessly invaded his family’s privacy for inspiration, he expects others to do the same to him. The refreshing thing about Wainwright is that nothing is off limits. Members of the Wainwright family in 2012 … back row from left: Martha, Rufus and Lucy. Families are complicated, as Wainwright tells me repeatedly – especially when you’ve got lots of them. All but one of the children are musicians – Rufus and Martha Wainwright are from his marriage to the Canadian singer-songwriter Kate McGarrigle Lucy Wainwright Roche, also a singer, is his daughter from his relationship with Suzzy Roche while Lexie Kelly Wainwright is his daughter with his second wife, Ritamarie Kelly. I’ve never gone into double digits before, so we’re getting close.” Wainwright has been married twice, had numerous relationships and fathered four children with three women. Is that a record for him? “It’s pretty good for me. They’ve been together seven or eight years, he says. “Hey Susan, he wants to know how old you are. He’s 76 this week, and looks in great nick – strong arms, handsome face, mischievous twinkle. He’s speaking by video call from the home he shares with Morrison on Long Island, New York.
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